Nighttime.

I’ve always been afraid of the dark. Still today, at the age of 21, I run up the stairs if I am the last one downstairs who has to turn out the lights. My heart races as I try to escape the darkness that always manages to follow me.

What is it that scares me about the dark? Well, you can’t see a thing. Sure, that’s the obvious answer. But there really could be anything there. Especially in the phase where your eyes aren’t adjusted and it is literally pitch black.

Darkness has so much power. Fear of the unknown.

Sometimes I hear noises as I’m falling asleep or I see a weird shadow, so I reach for the lamp in full panic mode.

Nothing there. I feel so defeated when I turn the light on and there’s nothing there.

There’s also another element of darkness.

You manage to drift off to sleep and enter the world of dreams. You wake up in the middle of the night and it’s so dark that you could be anywhere in the world. You’re in a groggy state, so you try to look around to get your bearings. But sometimes it’s just too dark to decipher anything.

There’s this one moment when you can’t figure it out and you actually forget who you are. Where am I? Who am I? Did that really happen?

Just like turning on the light when you hear a noise, only to find that there’s nothing there, you feel so defeated when you snap out of the daze and realize that it wasn’t all a dream. The moonlight shines through the window just enough to illuminate your alarm clock—a quick snap back to reality. Your problems didn’t erase, and you can’t go back in time to a different body.

Darkness erases a lot. It erases our vision and our comprehension and our grasp of reality for just a second. But eventually you wake up and have to face the light where there’s no question about what’s in front of you.